The Accidental Detective

COULD WALK TO P ATTERSON P ARK from her office, so she leashed her greyhound, Esskay, and headed over there at sunset. It was still uncomfortably muggy, and she couldn’t believe anyone would be playing baseball, yet a game was under way, with more than enough men to field two teams.
    And they were all Latino. Tess had noticed that Central and South Americans were slowly moving into the neighborhood. The first sign had been the restaurants, Mexican and Guatemalan and Salvadoran, then the combination
tienda-farmacia
-video stores. Spanish could be heard in city streets now, although Tess’s high school studies had not equipped her to follow the conversations.
    Still, to see twenty, thirty men in one spot, calling to one another in a language and jargon that was not hers, was extraordinary. Stodgy Baltimore was capable of changing, after all, and not always for the worse.
    The players wore street clothes and their gloves were as worn as their faces, which ran the gamut from pale beige to black-coffee dark. They were good, too, better than the overcompetitive corporate types that Tess had glimpsed at company softball games. Their lives were hard, but that only increased their capacity for joy. They played because it was fun, because they were adept at it. She watched the softball soar to the outfield again and again, where it was almost always caught.
Muchacho, muchacho, muchacho.
The center fielder had an amazing arm, capable of throwing out a runner who tried to score from third on a long fly ball. And all the players were fast, wiry and quick, drunk as six-year-olds on their own daring.
    When the center fielder himself was called out at third trying to stretch a double, the players quarreled furiously, and a fistfight seemed imminent, but the players quickly backed down.
    Dusk and the last out came almost simultaneously and the men gathered around a cooler filled with Carling Black Label. It wasn’t legal to drink in the park, but Tess couldn’t imagine the Southeast cop who would bust them. She sauntered over, suddenly aware that there were no other women here, not even as fans. The men watched her and the greyhound approach, and she decided that she would not have any problem engaging them.
    Getting them to speak truthfully, about the subject she wanted to discuss—that was another matter.
    “
Habla inglés?
” she asked.
    All of them nodded, but only one spoke. “
Sí,
” said the center fielder, a broad-shouldered young man in a striped T-shirt and denim work pants. “I mean—yes, yes, I speak English.”
    “You play here regularly?”
    “Yesssssss.” His face closed off and Tess realized that a strange woman, asking questions, was not going to inspire confidence.
    “I have an uncle who owns a couple of restaurants nearby and he’s looking for workers. He’s in a hurry to find people. He wanted me to spread the word, then interview people at my office tomorrow. It’s only a few blocks from here, and I’ll be there nine to five.”
    “We got jobs,” the spokesman said. “And not just in restaurants. I’m a—” He groped for the word in English. “I make cars.”
    “Well, maybe some of you want better jobs, or different ones. Or maybe you know people who are having trouble finding work—for whatever reason. My uncle’s very … relaxed about stuff. Here’s my card, just in case.”
    The card was neutral, giving nothing away about her real profession, just a name and number. The center fielder took it noncommittally, holding it by a corner as if he planned to throw it down the moment she left. But Tess saw some bright, interested eyes in the group.
    “Hey, lady,” the spokesman said as she began to walk away.
    “Yes?” She couldn’t believe that she was getting results so swiftly.
    “If your uncle plans on cooking
tu perro,
your dog, he better put some meat on it first. You—you’re fine.”
    Even the men’s laughter sounded foreign to her ears—not mean or cruel, just different.
    T HE NEXT DAY, SHE KEPT her office hours as promised, although she wasn’t surprised when no one showed up. She filled the time by reading everything she could find about Bandit’s bout of
turista.
Herb Marquez thought this was all about him, but wasn’t it also possible that someone had targeted Bandit? But she was stunned by the sheer volume of baseball information on the Internet. She wandered from site to site, taking strange detours through stats and newspaper columns, ending up in an area